Trials: Noriega Makes His Case

By CATHY BOOTH MIAMI

"This case hasn't been much like L.A. Law, has it?" joked Jon May, one of General Manuel Antonio Noriega's defense lawyers, to the 12 jurors sitting in the ornate main courtroom of Miami's federal courthouse. May had a point. The drug-trafficking and racketeering trial against the former Panamanian strongman, now in its fourth month, has droned on in near obscurity, with convicted smugglers and tainted tattletales spinning stories of cocaine smuggling, sly banking maneuvers and French dancing girls.

Last week the general's lawyers began their response to the 10-count indictment charging him with taking millions in bribes to turn Panama into a way station for Colombian cocaine lords. The presentation was unexpectedly tame. Gone were the claims that Noriega, who helped the U.S. funnel illegal aid to the Nicaraguan contras, had been duped by CIA contract pilots using their empty planes to fly home cocaine. By last week any hint of that defense had been discarded, as had plans for calling as a witness Oliver North, the former White House aide at the center of the Iran-contra arms scandal.

Conspiracy buffs will wonder if Noriega's lawyers are holding back on revelations about the contras because of a deal with the Bush Administration, which is edgy about new bombshells as the 1992 presidential campaign gets under way. More likely, the lawyers could never find enough evidence to support the allegations. Judge William Hoeveler blocked testimony about arms shipments to the contras. Also, he rejected as irrelevant use of classified records from the 1983 meeting between Noriega and Vice President George Bush. "There's more than meets the eye in the Noriega case," says Dick & Gregorie, one of the former assistant U.S. Attorneys who developed the case against Noriega. "But nobody wanted to push certain buttons."

Instead, defense lawyers are trying to show that Noriega was a loyal U.S. ally in the war on drugs by extracting testimony from a series of former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs and their high-ranking aides. One by one, the flattering "Dear General Noriega" letters sent by former DEA administrators came out in embarrassing procession last week. The authors claimed on the witness stand that they were merely being "diplomatic" and didn't really mean it when they praised Noriega for his "unprecedented" help and "long-standing support." In reality, groused former DEA administrators Peter Bensinger and John Lawn, they viewed General Noriega with suspicion.

Still, various DEA chiefs and attaches admitted that Noriega's Panama Defense Forces had closed down the infamous Darien drug-refining lab of the Medellin cartel, confiscated drug-refining chemicals, helped catch drug traffickers and money launderers, and even closed a cartel-controlled bank. James Bramble, former head of the DEA office in Panama, testified that a P.D.F. tip led to the capture of the cartel's top money launderer, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, when he was in Florida to ship $5.5 million in drug proceeds to Panama. His arrest occurred at about the same time that the prosecution claims Noriega was accepting a $500,000 bribe from the cartel to protect money laundering in Panama.

The prosecution case, based largely on testimony from former drug traffickers who have received lenient treatment for their cooperation, was weak on some key points, most notably the inability of Noriega's colleagues to agree on payoffs the general allegedly took from the cartel to protect the Darien lab. Although 15,000 boxes of documents were seized by U.S. troops during the 1989 invasion, the lone scrap of written evidence about Noriega's involvement in drugs was a piece of yellow notepaper with some scribbled words on it. As the defense pointed out, it could well have been notes for a speech.

The prosecution's most sensational witness -- ex-Medellin drug boss Carlos Lehder -- testified that at one point 80% of all Colombian cocaine shipments were flowing through Panama, yielding Noriega $1 million a month in payoffs for looking the other way. Yet despite his cartel position, Lehder never met Noriega and had no direct knowledge of payoffs. But drug trafficker Gabriel Taboada testified that he saw Noriega visit the Medellin cartel offices and accept a bag with $500,000, while drug pilot Roberto Streidinger said he delivered a gift of six dancing girls.

The betting around the courthouse is that only two racketeering counts against Noriega will stick. Meanwhile, the DEA reports, drug trafficking is again on the rise in Panama. U.S. investigators are looking into links between traffickers and the law firm of Guillermo Endara, who became Panama's President when Noriega was overthrown.